{"entity":{"id":"idea-fund-scoop-protection-policy","kind":"idea","name":"Scoop protection and co-publication norms to reduce academic secrecy","aka":[],"tldr":"Scientists hide results for fear of being beaten to publication. If journals and funders guaranteed that a preprinted finding cannot be scooped, and encouraged rival groups to publish side by side, sharing would become safe.","summary":"Journals in the cancer field adopt explicit scoop-protection policies (a preprint or registered report establishes priority and a competing paper appearing during review does not affect acceptance, as PLOS and eLife have done) and funders count preprints as outputs. Add a co-publication mechanism in which groups working on the same question are matched and encouraged to publish back-to-back with cross-replication, which the field treats as a strength. Secrecy delays diffusion and, by preventing early cross-checking, contributes to irreproducible claims reaching translation.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration): Danchev et al., Evaluation of data sharing after implementation of the ICMJE data sharing statement requirement (JAMA Netw Open 2021)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.33972"}],"tags":[],"related":["idea-fund-open-results-bonus","idea-fund-academic-promotion-reform"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-ip-collaboration","b-reproducibility","b-knowledge-diffusion"],"keyPapers":["paper-danchev-jama-netw-open"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"In the two years after major oncology journals adopt scoop protection, the share of cancer biology papers preprinted before submission rises by at least half and surveys show a measurable fall in reported withholding of methods and data before publication.","rationale":"Preprinting rates rose sharply in fields where journals signalled acceptance and protection (genomics, neuroscience); the pandemic showed biomedical researchers will share early when norms permit. Back-to-back publication of independent confirmations is already a respected format in structural biology and genetics.","test":"Track preprint rates and survey-reported withholding in oncology before and after policy adoption by a coalition of journals and funders, compared with a field without the change.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"research","cost":"small","horizonYears":2},"route":"/ideas/idea-fund-scoop-protection-policy/","neighbours":{"idea":[{"id":"idea-fund-open-results-bonus","kind":"idea","name":"Funder bonuses for releasing results and data within six months, negatives included","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-open-results-bonus/"},{"id":"idea-fund-academic-promotion-reform","kind":"idea","name":"Promote academics for trials completed, data shared and findings replicated","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-academic-promotion-reform/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-knowledge-diffusion","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Knowledge reaches practice too slowly","route":"/bottlenecks/b-knowledge-diffusion/"},{"id":"b-reproducibility","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Preclinical results do not reproduce","route":"/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/"},{"id":"b-ip-collaboration","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Secrecy and intellectual property block collaboration","route":"/bottlenecks/b-ip-collaboration/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-danchev-jama-netw-open","kind":"paper","name":"Evaluation of Data Sharing After Implementation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Data Sharing Statement Requirement","route":"/key-papers/paper-danchev-jama-netw-open/"}]}}